


Golden

by anorak188



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Bellamy Survived, Do I need to say more?, F/M, Fix-It, It Was The Bellamy And Clarke Story All Along, Jason Is Too Much Of A Coward To Let This Happen, they kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:54:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26787028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anorak188/pseuds/anorak188
Summary: Despite everything, Bellamy is somehow still alive, and is now faced with a choice: golden light or golden hair.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 14
Kudos: 109





	Golden

The last thing he remembers is his heart shattering.

It was like déjà vu. There he was, twenty-two years old again, with Clarke aiming a gun at him. He was going to open the doors to save the human race. The Grounders – their enemies – they were people too. His sister was out there, banging on the doors for her rightfully won place in the bunker. Clarke was his family now – their experiences together had made that solid in his heart – but he held sixteen years of loving and protecting Octavia over six months of knowing Clarke. The choice was easy to him. He would try to save her until his dying breath. Clarke’s hands shook, but they lowered the gun.

Now, nearly thirty, or rather one hundred and fifty something, the scene repeated itself, but the stakes were higher. It’s hard to disprove something you have seen with your own two eyes. Transcendence was in reach – just on the other side of the Last War. He could give her – he could give the entire human race – peace and life forever if they would just listen to him. Beings of light – of course he knew how ridiculous that sounded. In his hands are a notebook with Madi’s drawings. He should’ve known – he did know – what a dangerous thing that was to touch. Love is treacherous at best, but parental love is dangerous. He was willing to give his life for Octavia on more than one occasion. He knew Clarke wouldn’t hesitate. As much as he tried to repress how he felt, he hoped, no, he believed, he trusted her to lower her gun. But she didn’t. He knew she wouldn’t hesitate to give her life for Madi. He just didn’t know she wouldn’t hesitate to give his.

His heart shattered.

His death he could accept.

But her death he couldn’t. Without her – without his head – he lost all sense, all logic, driven only by a singular motive: save her.

He knew where this would go. The bullet in his heart was easier to breathe with than the knowledge that without him she would lose her heart, her soul, her humanity.

He was glad he was dying. He couldn’t bear to watch that.

He remembers someone putting pressure on his chest and a vivid green light – the bridge.

Now he felt cold. More than cold, it was an ache in his very bones.

Why does he feel cold? Why does he feel anything at all? The war hadn’t begun yet. He wouldn’t transcend. Death was the end, and that was okay.

Suddenly he’s standing in a room with pods lining the walls, not unlike on the Eligius ship. As he touches the glass, cold stings his fingertips, and he realizes these are cryo pods. He looks down and he feels the blood drains from his face.

It’s him. He’s lying there in the second pod from the floor, still in his white robes, though not much is left white.

“Choose,” a voice says from behind.

He whips around, looking for the voice he’d know anywhere. His heart sinks.

“Octavia?” he walks up to her, running his hands down the sides of her arms. “Why are you dressed as Blodreina?”

She stares at him for a moment, and somehow the light in her eyes is wrong. They are her eyes, and this is her face, but this isn’t Octavia looking at him. “You love her. This version of her haunts you, though. You hold a lot of guilt for not being there to stop her from walking this dark path.”

He shakes his head. “What?”

“Octavia,” the imposter says. “I am not her.”

He nods. “I can see that. Why am I here,” he gestures to himself, and then to the sleeping figure in the cryo pod, “but also in there?”

“I am your judge,” she says coolly. “And also your guide. Your kind has passed the test. You now must make your choice.”

“Test?”

“I believe you were told it was a war.” Her eyebrows raise and she shakes her head in disbelief. “Though the man who told you that is no longer alive to mislead you.”

“The Shepard? What happened?”

“Murdered during the test. It was a first,” she says simply. “I believe you were looking for transcendence, but I still offer you the choice to remain in this realm, in a new body, if you wish.”

“Transcendence is a choice?”

She furrows her brow. “Who would we be if we did not allow you to come or go of your own free will?”

He only needs the answer to one question to know which path he will choose. “Where is she?”

Mock-Octavia tilts her head in amusement, walking a slow circle around him. “You are the first person in over two hundred years to be converted to the Bardoan faith. A faith that strips humans of everything that makes them such a unique species, primarily of their capacity to love, but faith nonetheless.” She completes her circle and stands in front of him. “The Bardoan faith demands that you dismember all ties to all people. You ask me, ‘Where is she?’ but you refer to two people.”

He shakes his head, trying to erase his thoughts from her prying mind. “I mean Octavia.”

“You do,” she hums, “and you don’t.”

“Please,” he tries again. “Which did she choose?”

“I will not tell you what she chose. But I will tell you that both women you ask for chose the same. Rather, one chose, one was given her place for her actions. But they are together.”

Given a place for her actions? Is it Blodreina’s sins who cost her transcendence, or was it Wanheda’s? Or did one of them take the test and grant humanity the light?

She regards him curiously. “Such interesting creatures, indeed.”

He looks to Blodreina, who looks bemused at his torn soul. “Did one of them take the test? Who took the test?”

“They both took the test,” she says. “Hurry up, Bellamy. I will not wait forever.”

If both took the test, that means at least one failed. “Wait. You said the Shepard was murdered during the test.” 

She nods. “He was.”

It feels like a waste. He spent ten months in a cave with Doucette, spent his last days with his friends being cruel to him, rejecting him, and he stood in front of Clarke willing to die for transcendence. Josephine’s body snatching was just a taste of one being without the other. _The heart and the head. Without the other, it’s over_.

He takes a deep breath. “I reject transcendence.”

She nods. “We’re disappointed not to have you, Bellamy. They are on Earth, where they will live out the rest of their days, then die in their own time. There will be no offspring. This is the last of the human race. When you are gone, humanity’s journey will be complete. I wish you well.” With that, Blodreina seems to vanish into thin air, swirling into a red and black cloud before disappearing completely.

He turns back to look at himself in the cryo pod, but that’s empty too.

He only spent a few days on Bardo and the compound is huge. He opens the door and gasps.

At least fifty bodies litter this hallway alone. What happened to this not being a war?

He closes his eyes briefly, trying to compose himself. _Home_ , he tells himself. _You have to go home_.

These people should be buried, or burned, or transported to Nakara, or in someway given final rites, but there are so many Bellamy would waste his mortal days taking care of them all. He just has to find the stone room. Time will take care of them.

He opens doors at random and they are all empty, save one, an M-Cap room with a single golden being at the edge of the center dais, a permanent marker of a transcended soul.

That could’ve been him. He could’ve left his body here in Bardo in the cryo room. He could’ve been the light. Warm, free of pain, perfect.

He shuts the door tightly, fighting against his head, which tells him he made the wrong choice, and instead clings to his heart’s longings of golden hair rather than golden light. His heart has always won. It always will.

He picks up a helmet along the way, though it was hard to find one that wasn’t drenched in blood, as well as new clothes, ones that aren’t disciple robes, and finally finds the stone room. He puts on the helmet and searches for the code to Earth. As he puts in the last symbol and the bridge opens, he realizes he’ll be going home, to Earth, for the first time in over a hundred and twenty-five years. His memories of Earth are not what Earth will be now. No, Earth has Harper and Monty and Jasper and Kane and Jaha and Abby. The only people he can be certain of being there are Octavia and Clarke, who may not welcome him home. He feels his heart pounding in his chest, air expanding and filling his lungs. A memory hits him, striking as hard as the bullet.

_She looks up at him, her expression shadowed by the low light. He woke up to the sound of her crying, trying to turn what was left of their celestial home into a literal Noah’s Ark with that list. She bears so much for them, tries to take on the burden of humanity all alone, but in this moment she turned to him for her strength. “You still have hope?”_

_He gave her a half smile. Realistically, no, he didn’t have hope. He wasn’t about to let her down though. He would be at her side, giving her all his strength until he had nothing left to give. “We still breathing?”_

It reminds him that he’s still breathing, despite everything.

He steps through.

He knew there had to be a stone on Earth, but he didn’t expect it to be in the bunker where 1200 people lived for six years during Praimfaya. Surely someone would’ve found it before now. Though looking back, it made sense to be located in the Second Dawn bunker. In fact, the bunker was probably built around it. Even so, he was still just absolutely baffled that no one ever found it. Looking around at the mix of red and black blood on the floors and walls, he knew he didn’t want to stay in there a moment longer. He knew where the red blood came from with the reign of Blodreina, but he didn’t dare stop to question what nightblood had been slaughtered here. He couldn’t bear to know the answer.

Earth turned out not to be the wasteland he was told it would be. Monty said Earth would never recover, yet here Bellamy stood, breathing in clean air in a vast forest. Young trees sprouted up all around him, reminding him of landing on Earth for the very first time. It was green. So very green.

All alone in overgrown Polis, he wondered where Clarke and Octavia were. There was no way to know how long they’d been here or how long it had taken the guide/judge/whatever she was to ask him if he wanted transcendence. He didn’t know how they felt, but he knew where he wanted to go, the one place he wanted to see again, assuming it hadn’t been wiped off the face of the earth when the hytholdium bomb hit – the dropship. If this really was the end of it all, if all that was left was for him to spend his days waiting for death, he wanted to see the place where it all began. It’s miles away and there’s no rover, so the only thing left to do now is to walk.

He’s not sure how long he walks for, but it’s nearing dusk when he hears crying. His ears perk up, trying to find the sound. Animals don’t cry, not like that. One of them is near.

He follows the sound through the woods, nearly stepping on Clarke in the low light, who has her back turned to him until she hears him. She instinctively stands, turning in an instant, reaching for a gun that isn’t there.

Her nose red and eyes puffy, she shakes her head, disgusted. “You.”

He tries the half smile, the one that brought her cheer all those years ago. “It’s me.”

She turns around and plops down on the log again. “I don’t know why I thought life would be different here.”

He sits down beside her, but she immediately gets up and starts pacing. “It is different,” he says. “In a way.”

Her lip quivers. “I heard you. What you said to Josephine. About how you see the people you killed in your dreams.” She shakes her head, tiny gasps escaping her mouth as she struggles to hold back tears. “But I’m not sleeping and you still haunt me.”

“No, no,” he shakes his head, reaching out for her, but she sidesteps him like a venomous snake. “No, this is real. I’m here. I’m really here.”

“I killed you,” she swallows, her voice shaky. “I killed you to save Madi and Cadogan killed her anyway. He left her in M-Cap, locked in her body, after getting what he wanted. She might as well have been dead.” She doubles over on the forest floor, sobbing so hard it almost sounds like screaming. “He used her and left her die alone.”

A cold sweat runs over him. “I didn’t know that.”

Still crumpled on the ground, she unfolds enough to look him in the eye. At first glance, she looks angry, but sadness and heartbreak and hurt overpower anger. “You knew.”

He shakes his head, his own voice starting to crack. She was what? Twelve? Thirteen? “No, no. I didn’t.”

“You did,” she nods, a second wave of crying hitting her. She doesn’t try to fight him and that hurts him most of all. “I told you. I told you he didn’t care how he got the code and he didn’t. He didn’t care that he killed my child for his own selfish pursuit. You supported him. You supported that. What happened to ‘I’ll keep Madi safe’? Or did you forget about that promise like you forgot about all of us the second you saw the light?”

He struggles for the words. “I never forgot about that. I never forgot about you.” He stammers. “I – I thought transcendence would save her. All of us.”

“I was never worth transcendence.” Clarke holds her knees tight against her chest and stares off into nothing. “I spent six years raising her. I was her mother for half her life. And now, now my last image of her is her lying in my arms in M-Cap, completely locked in, couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t look at me. And you were right,” she chokes out. “And that’s what I hate most of all. Transcendence is real. She transcended and left me here, alone.”

He tries to steady himself, gripping the log for support. He’s not sure which is harder to bear – Clarke’s broken heart that’s his fault or the image in his head of that very thing happening to Octavia, knowing that the image barely grasps what Clarke feels right now.

She looks over at him, rolling her eyes. “What, no words now? If only I’d known berating my ghosts would get them to shut up. Could’ve saved a lot of torture.”

He rubs his eyes, hoping the moonlight isn’t bright enough to catch the glisten. “I’m not a ghost, Clarke. Cadogan had me put in cryo so I could transcend after the Last War.” He shakes his head. “Test, I mean.”

She looks him up and down, frowning. “Should’ve saved the freezer space.”

“Clarke.”

She stands up, brushing off her hands on her pants, sniffling. “I’m going back to the others. Don’t follow me.”

Despite her demands, he can’t help but stand up too. “There are others besides Octavia? How many?”

She shrugs, wiping her nose with her sleeve. “Doesn’t matter because you’re not following me.” She turns and walks off into the night.

“Wait,” he says, closing his eyes, preparing himself for the words to start spilling out. Once he admits this, there’s no going back.

“What?” she snaps.

“Don’t you want to know why? After all that, after everything I sacrificed, after I turned against everyone, don’t you want to know why I’m here? Don’t you want to know why I didn’t transcend?”

She turns her hands up. “Do you want me to count the murders, or?”

“You,” he swallows. “I didn’t transcend because of you.”

“Great,” she spits. “So now I’m subconsciously manipulating people into rejecting everything they ever wanted and getting the blame for it. Thank you for letting me know.”

“No, Clarke,” his voice is thick, panicked. He’s losing her. He reaches out and grabs her arm, holding her in one place long enough to say it. “I didn’t go because I don’t want to be away from you ever again. We’ve been separated so much. . .” he trails. “I can’t, Clarke, I can’t do that anymore.”

She rolls in her lips, pressing them together so hard they turn pale, and squeezes her eyes shut. “Now I know you’re really just a figment of my imagination.”

He’s gone over the motion in his head a thousand times. Before she left him at the gates of Arkadia. Before she went into the City of Light. When she thanked him after. When she called him special. Before she went to adjust the satellite. When he came home to her. When she survived Josephine. When she came home to him. He’s rehearsed the motion a thousand times.

He leans in and kisses her softly, touching her cheek and stretching his fingers around the side of her face and to the nape of her neck, tangling his fingers in her hair. He knows what her body feels like against his, what it feels like to have her head in the crook of his neck, her chin tucked in his collarbone. He’s felt her hair, that beautiful golden hair he wishes he could run his fingers through all day and braid and twist and twirl. He knows her touch, but not like this, not when her hands grip his t-shirt at his sides. Eventually he has to take a breath, so he pulls apart but she doesn’t move, her forehead pressed against his, breathless herself.

“You’re real,” she breathes. “That felt real.”

He smiles, touching the tip of his nose to hers. “I’m here.”

Still just as serious, she looks at him, her eyes mere inches from his own. “That should’ve happened a long time ago.”

He grins, then laughs, nodding. “I agree.”

Her lips turn up for a moment. “Don’t go,” she pleads.

He pulls her into his chest, her hands still tight on his sides, and wraps his arms around her. “I have an entire lifetime to spend with you. I’m not going anywhere.” He nuzzles the side of her face, breathing in her scent and the feeling of her smooth cheek against his stubble. Life had been full of impossible choices, but when faced with it, this wasn’t one of them. “You are worth so much more than transcendence.”


End file.
